admin's blog

CHICAGO (AP) — Two bank robbers pulled off a daring escape from downtown Chicago's high-rise jail Tuesday by apparently scaling down about 20 stories using a makeshift rope tied to the bars in a cell window.

Police helicopters and canine units swarmed the area, but not until more than three hours after Joseph "Jose" Banks and Kenneth Conley went unaccounted for during a 5 a.m. headcount, U.S. Marshal's Service spokeswoman Belkis Cantor said.

Both men were still at large late Tuesday night.

Investigators found a broken window in the men's cell, where window bars were found inside a mattress, according to an FBI affidavit filed late Tuesday. Fake metal bars also were found in the men's cell, a rope was tied to a window bar, and each man's bed was stuffed with clothing and sheets to resemble a body, the affidavit said.

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — A man opened fire Friday inside the Connecticut elementary school where his mother worked as a teacher, killing 26 people, including 20 children, as youngsters cowered in their classrooms and trembled helplessly to the sound of gunfire reverberating through the building.

The killer, armed with two handguns, committed suicide and another person was found dead at a second scene, bringing the toll to 28, authorities said.

The attack, coming less than two weeks before Christmas, was the nation's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead in 2007.

Panicked parents raced to Sandy Hook Elementary School, about 60 miles northeast of New York City, looking for their children. Students were told to close their eyes by police as they were led from the building.

A gunman at a Connecticut elementary school killed 27 people, including 18 children on Friday. It is among the world's worst mass shootings. Here is a look at some others:

— Aug. 5, 2012: Army veteran Wade Michael Page kills five men and one woman and wounds three other people, including a police officer, before taking his own life at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin outside Milwaukee.

— July 20, 2012: At least 12 people are killed when a gunman enters an Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre, releases a canister of gas and then opens fire during opening night of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises." James Holmes, a 24-year-old former graduate student at the University of Colorado, has been charged in the deaths.

— March 11, 2012: Sixteen Afghan villagers, including nine children, are killed during a predawn attack in which Army prosecutors have charged Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 39.

— July 22, 2011: Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik kills 77 in Norway in twin attacks: a bombing in downtown Oslo and a shooting massacre at a youth camp outside the capital. The self-styled anti-Muslim militant admitted both attacks.

(CNN) -- American technology pioneer John McAfee said he faked a heart attack while detained in Guatemala to buy time for his attorney to file a series of appeals that ultimately prevented his deportation to Belize, hastening the government's decision to send him back to the United States.

After weeks on the run and days in immigration detention, McAfee arrived in Miami on Wednesday.

He said Belize authorities in April 2011 accused him of running a methamphetamine lab, before the November 11 killing of his neighbor, American businessman Gregory Faull, and have since persecuted him.

"I have absolutely nothing to do with the murder in Belize," he said Thursday. "This is not about a murder in Belize. This began on the 30th of April of last year when 42 armed soldiers stormed my property."

A New York Boy Scouts leader was arrested Wednesday after authorities found hundreds of images of pornography on his computer involving children as young as five years old, officials said.

Edward Orenchuk III, of Garden City, N.Y., was charged with three counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child as a sexually motivated felony and three counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child, according to the Nassau County District Attorney's Office.

Investigators observed Orenchuk making multiple images of child pornography available for download online during August and September, and they tracked the source of those images to his home, said Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice.

Site Links

About

With the purpose of writing about true crime in an authoritative, fact-based manner, veteran journalists J. J. Maloney and J. Patrick O’Connor launched Crime Magazine in November of 1998. Their goal was to cover all aspects of true crime: Read More